1250-1280 The Enthroned Virgin and Child2011 SOLD 6.3 M€ including premium

Predominantly or even exclusively Christian, French Gothic art has created masterpieces. For sale on November 16at Christie'sin Paris, an ivory group of Virgin and Child is announced with a very open estimate of € 1 to 2 million, the first indication that this piece is of exceptional quality and rarity.

Carefully carved around 1250 to 1280, it is an exquisite work, 38 cm high. Seated on a throne and crowned, the mother holds the child on her lap, and an apple in her right hand. The young child with an abundant curly hair has a realistic face, which is a rare feature in medieval art. The ivory has acquired a nice patina. Here is the link to the catalog.

This work has much in common with the Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, dating from the reign of Louis IX (St. Louis) and now in the Louvre. Traditionally, the group for sale originated in a Provençal monastery. The link between Paris and the Mediterranea was strong in that reign as Queen Marguerite was the daughter of the comte de Provence.

The ancient pieces often have a history. The child's head, which had belonged to a separate collection, was adjusted again on the group in 1883.

POST SALE COMMENT

The price of real masterpieces can hardly be anticipated. This ivory statuette was sold € 6.3 million including premium.

1305 Giotto stopped at Rimini2014 SOLD 5.7 M£ including premium

At the end of the thirteenth century, the small town of Rimini gained a political importance when Malatesta became its podesta. The condottiero embellished the city: Giotto realized for the cathedral the frescoes that were destroyed around 1450.The date when Giotto was in Rimini is not documented but is certainly after his Assisi frescoes made ​​in 1298. Through considerations on the evolution of his art, it is known that his work at Rimini is prior to his long stay in Padua started in 1303.Giotto was one of the greatest innovators of Christian art. Superseding the stiff Byzantine style, he provided clever compositions featuring characters in flexible and communicating attitudes.The beginning of the Rimini school relies on the images by Giotto. At that time when artistic innovations were slowly spreading, Rimini long remained limited in the intermediate style of the maestro before the innovations of Padua.On July 9 in London, Sotheby's sells a sumptuous panel made between 1300 and 1305 in tempera on gold made by a follower of Giotto. In an exceptional condition of preservation, it is estimated £ 2M, lot 17.The author is probably Giovanni da Rimini, one of the earliest Rimini painters best known for a copy dated 1309 from a Crucifix by Giotto and who tentatively must not be confused with Giovanni Baronzio.This panel 53 x 34 cm shows biblical and hagiographic scenes in a bold composition joining vertically at the left side the upper two registers. It is the left wing of a diptych separated in the eighteenth century. The right wing displays in a stricter composition six episodes from the life of Christ. It is kept at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome.POST SALE COMMENTThis exceptional and very ancient painting was sold for £ 5.7M including premium.

1334 An Annunciation in the Trecento2012 SOLD 4.1 M$ including premium

Painting at the time of the first successors of Giotto is primarily intended for devotion. Diptych and polyptych are common forms of this art.

The painting on panel in tempera on gold background, 29 x 21 cm, for sale by Sotheby'sin New York on January 26 was the right part of a diptych on the theme of the Annunciation.

It demonstrates a remarkable artist's intention to link the human and the wonderful, providing a subtle psychological dimension to the attitude of the Virgin Mary.

She is here a very young woman, dressed in a lavishly decorated cloak, pushed to the right by the breath of the invisible angel (the character of the lost left part of the diptych). She is in the process of deciding with a concern which does not extend to anxiety whether to accept or not what she is just being told.

The artwork is attributed by recent but strong considerations to one of the top masters of Siena, SimoneMartini, circa 1334 and certainly before his move to Avignon which took place around 1340.

In addition to the iconographic quality, the consideration that the back of the panel was once silver coated is in line with a firm attribution to Simone, who could have been helped by the Lorenzetti brothers for the use of precious metals.

This small painting is a remarkable witness of the questions posed by Christian art at the time of the successors of Giotto. It was sold $ 4.1 million including premium.

I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's :

1330s - 1360s Private Devotion in Florence​2016 SOLD for $ 3.9M including premium

On April 14 in New York, Christie's sells as lot 125 an altar piece 77 cm high composed of panels in tempera and gold in an architectural structure in gesso. This complex piece in great condition is a witness of the religious art in Florence throughout the Trecento.

The central panel is the most ancient. Painted in the 1330s by Bernardo Daddi, it shows the Enthroned Madonna and Child.

Bernardo had worked with Giotto and is his best follower in Florence. These fresco masters also had clients for private devotion or portable pieces and knew to transcribe their grand art into miniature formats. In this charming scene, Bernardo uses a variety of soft colors. The lines are deliberately strengthened to provide a three-dimensional illusion.

The top and side pictures and the predellas were added about 30 years later and are attributed to the Misericordia Master who was the leading painter in Florence after the plague of 1348 in which Bernardo died. His name was not found.

These additional panels are shaped to match the gesso frame that has certainly been assembled at the same time for an unknown customer who can perhaps be identified by the coats of arms in the predellas.

The altar is now dominated by God the Father. On each side in symmetry, a pair of angels are ascending to God while trying to contemplate Him. The most daring, forward, overcomes the glare of light by using a dark glass. The other, still behind, has not found the solution and masks his eyes with his hand. This rare theme had previously adorned the pinnacle of a monumental altar by Giotto.

I invite you to watch the video shared by Christie's.

​1366 Two Lions at the Feet of the King​2017 SOLD for £ 9.4M including premium

In the long line of the kings of France the succession of Jean II in 1364 during the Hundred Years War is one of the most disputed. The 26 year old dauphin had been régent while his father was a prisoner and he was clever. Having won this ruthless dynastic competition, he will be Charles V le Sage.

The divine authority claimed by the legitimate heir is not sufficient to preserve and protect his power. Upon his accession Charles V multiplies the symbols of his superiority and of his prosperity. The lion is his emblem.

To maintain the chain of legitimacy they must also rehabilitate the ineffective Jean II. In the very first year of his reign Charles V decides to build the funerary monuments of Jean and of Jean's parents in the traditional necropolis of the Capétiens at Saint-Denis. He adds the commission for his own tomb, which is a considerable innovation for the time.

The contractor of the four monuments is the best sculptor of that period, known from a royal document as Andreu Bauneveu, André Beauneveu in modern French. The king is powerful and must be honored as a priority : his gisant (recumbent) is the best of the four with a beautiful polishing of the white marble. Beauneveu worked until 1366 on that site.

The royal monuments of Saint-Denis were dismantled in 1793. The outstanding pieces were recovered by the archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir, founder at the request of the government in 1791 of the Musée des Monuments Français for collecting artworks confiscated to the clergy by the Révolution. During the Restauration in 1816 King Louis XVIII obliged Lenoir to relocate to Saint-Denis what remained from the monuments of the necropolis including the gisant of Charles V by Beauneveu.

The monument of Charles V included a group of two addorsed lions which was placed at the feet of the king. This group was only known from one sketch drawing made by an antiquarian scholar. It has just been rediscovered in the descendance of an English collector who had acquired it in 1802, certainly bought to Lenoir whose financial backing was low at that time.

This group of lions is a marble of the same quality as its gisant and certainly executed by the same artist. The fixing points of this statue match exactly the distance of the associated points on the feet of the gisant.

The Beauneveu lions, 45 x 29 x 12 cm, will be sold as lot 10 by Christie's in London on July 6. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.

1416 The Funerary Art of the Valois​2016 SOLD for € 5M including premium

In 1364 Charles V becomes King of France, aged 26. He immediately commissions the graves of his grandparents Philippe VI and Queen Jeanne who had died during the plague epidemic in 1350 and 1349 respectively, and of his father Jean II whose body was repatriated from England.

The new king also wants to prepare for the future. He requires to simultaneously prepare his own monument and his gisant (recumbent) in white marble which are the masterpieces of André Beauneveu.

The descendants of St. Louis view this new funerary art installed in grand chapels as a way to maintain respect and even devotion from the people. The dukes of Burgundy and of Berry, sons of Charles V, amplify that tradition.

Philippe de Bourgogne approves in 1381 the drawing for his own monument. The recumbent figure is placed on a high base flanked by arches sheltering a procession of 41 pleurants (mourners) 40 cm high. There is no emergency. Most of these statuettes will be realized by Claus de Werwe, nephew of Claus Sluter, between 1406 and 1410. The duke had died in 1404.

Jean de Berry certainly wanted to imitate his brother because his monument has a very similar design. He defines his chapel at Bourges in 1391 from the model of the Sainte-Chapelle of St. Louis. At the death of the duke in 1416, Jean de Cambrai had made the recumbent and the canopy and started the arches. He had also completed five surface-mounted statuettes of mourners in marble from the 40 that had been scheduled.

Two of the mourners in marble remain in private hands. They will be sold together by Christie's in Paris on June 15, lot 24estimated € 4.5 million.

The male heirs of Jean de Berry predeceased him and a tribute to the late duke was no longer appealing. The payment of the artists is suspended and the work is stopped. The 35 other mourners will be realized circa 1450 in alabaster, cheaper than the marble. The style has changed and the attitudes are more expressive. Two of these statuettes, from the same collection as the two marbles discussed above, were sold together for € 4M including premium by Christie's on November 8, 2013.

1455 Gutenberg Bible1987 SOLD for $ 5.4M including premium by Christie's

1464 The Romance of the Bigamist Knight2012 SOLD 3.85 M£ including premium

The courtly romance was very popular in the early Middle Ages. The heroic deeds attributed to the knights during the Crusades become legends in which fantastic scenes mingle with realistic episodes. The good knight lived the most fabulous adventures for the honor of his wife.

At the end of the Hundred Years' War, the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good maintains a prestigious court and is a patron of arts and literature. The prose novel Gillion de Trazegnies, composed at that time by an anonymous writer, is an amazing example of the revival of the courtly romance, with all the features of this literary genre.

The Trazegnies family actually existed in Hainaut, and the legend of the bigamist knight was told a long time before the writing of the novel. The reader is made weeping with this story of a pilgrim to the Holy Land who becomes a prisoner, believes that his wife is dead, becomes unintentionally a bigamist and is released of this accidental sin by his chevaleresque attitude.

This novel was published last year by the medievalist Stéphanie Vincent, who had access to the five copies in illuminated manuscripts of the original edition, all made for the Duke and his entourage.

Louis de Gruuthuse, stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland, was one of the five privileged who received such a copy, illuminated in 1464 with 8 large and 44 small images. Then it belonged to Francis I king of France and to the Dukes of Devonshire. It is estimated £ 3M, for sale by Sotheby's in London onDecember 5.

The illuminated page where you see the narrator discovering the heart of Gillion between the graves of his two wives is shown in the press release shared by Artdaily.

POST SALE COMMENT

This outstanding manuscript illuminated in Antwerp or Bruges was sold £ 3.85M including premium.

I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's introducing both this romance and the Mystère de la Vengeance already discussed in this group :

​early 1470s Unveiling a Renaissance Virgin and Child​2017 SOLD for $ 9M including premium

On April 27 in New York, Christie's sells a panel 111 x 125 cm composed as a triptych in Renaissance style, lot 8 estimated $ 3M. At first glance the piece is shocking : it is an oil painting with the exception of the drawings of the Virgin and Child in the central part and of one of the two characters of saints in the left wing.

The great collector Horace Walpole had acquired it for 80 guineas in 1752 in an auction, as a scene of the marriage of Henry VII with Elizabeth of York in 1486. A difference in technique between the characters and the architectural elements suggests that the composition is hybrid but Walpole is very proud to possess this painting considered as typically Tudor. The provenance is known : it had belonged to William Sykes half a century earlier.

It is exhibited in 1890. An acute observer tells in the Gazette des Beaux Arts that he perceives a classic Virgin and Child through the central part which is a church interior without figures.

The work was acquired in 1977 by the art dealer Edward Speelman. Convinced that only the architectural elements and three of the four saints were contemporaries of the Flemish Renaissance, he entrusted the restoration to the specialist David Bull of the Norton Simon Museum.

In a patient work that spans almost ten years, Bull removes with his knife the 18th century paintings, certainly made by or for Sykes who had a reputation as a faker and knew how to transform works when it pleased his clients. Bull's work brings to light a superb drawing of the Virgin and Child in the central part, supersedes Elizabeth of York with an ill-preserved drawing of St John the Baptist and restitutes to the false Tudor the attributes of St. Louis.

The expertise continued. Radiographic inspection and infrared reflectography demonstrate that the quality of the under-drawing is homogeneous throughout the surface. All the composite elements resulting from the painstaking work of Bull come from a Renaissance work. The beauty of drawing, painting and colors indicates that this panel is the autograph work of a master.

The comparison of expressive details, such as the face of the Virgin or the study of feet, with works indisputably attributed to Hugo van der Goes is convincing and a dating in the early 1470s is consistent with the dendrochronology of the panel. Hugo was a perfectionist until he fell into madness. He worked in Ghent where he admired the polyptych painted half a century earlier by the van Eyck brothers for the altar of St. Bavon's cathedral.

1492 Descent to the Limbo by Mantegna2003 SOLD 28 M$ including premium

1493-1495 The Florentine Grace of Sandro Botticelli2013 SOLD 10.5 M$ including premium

Sandro Botticelli is an empathetic artist. His art will never be outdated. Like Praxiteles and Picasso, he was able to take as a model the most beautiful woman in the world.

Botticelli's life is poorly documented, but his passion for his city, Florence, is the thread.

On January 30in New York, Christie's sells a Madonna and Child with the young St John. This tempera on panel is estimated $ 5M. Waiting for the catalog, here is the link to the article shared by Artdaily when this painting was offered for sale at Maastricht in 2010. Of small size, 48 x 38 cm, it was designed for private devotion.

Botticelli's art is not narrative. The scene is by evidence located in Florence, and is not a Biblical story. The presence of John is only meaning that he is the patron saint of Florence. The three characters are graceful and communicate together with ardor. The faces are beautiful.

This work is dated around 1493-1495, the period of transition between the principate of Lorenzo de' Medici and the theocracy of Savonarola. The legend that he had himself brought his secular works in the Bonfire of the Vanities is not confirmed by Vasari, but it seems certain that his career as an artist became difficult afterwards.POST SALE COMMENT

This small painting typical of the emotional art of Botticelli was sold $ 10.5 million including premium.

mid 1490s Virgin and Child at the Time of Savonarola2013 SOLD 13 M$ including premium

On January 30in New York, Christie's sells a small tondo by FraBartolommeo, on the subject of Virgin and Child. Still remaining in its original frame, this oil on panel is estimated $ 10M. It is a recent discovery.

The likely date proposed by the auction house, the mid-1490s, is the era of the iconoclastic dictatorship of Savonarola, the preacher of repentance.

The relationship between art and Christianity were already an intense concern in Florence at the end of the glorious principate of Lorenzo de' Medici. The dying Lorenzo had doubts about the merits of his work, and chose (but unsuccessfully) Savonarola as his last confessor.

Savonarola, whose memory of his bonfires horrifies the art lovers of today, was chasing the vanities. Botticelli's mythological works have sunk therein. But he did not reject art when it glorified the Christian virtues.

Baccio della Porta, born in 1472, is a young artist whose skills are already recognized. Becoming an avid follower of Savonarola, he directs his art in accordance with the theocratic vision of his guru of whom he will also execute a very famous portrait.

It was only in 1500, when Baccio became the Dominican friar Fra Bartolomeo (or Fra Bartolommeo), that he will abandon his activity as an artist for a long period, before brilliantly resuming his brushes at the time of Raphael.

The tondo for sale is a very charming example of Christian art. The naked child rises to the mother's neck for a kiss. Empathy is intense between mother and child. The tondo format, as circular as a halo, contributes to the perfection of this nicely composed image.

POST SALE COMMENT

Deserved result for this very attractive painting by Fra Bartolommeo: $ 13M including premium.